Mason Wheeler’s Comments

Here's another good question: how much of "your" labor would be impossible, or impractical enough as to be useless, without the contributions of everyone around you, which you are entitled to as a civilized member of society?

But there's a much bigger question: will the FTC actually bother? The fact that Lenovo reacted pretty quickly to this mess probably suggests that the FTC may not bother. Yes, Lenovo's initial reaction wasn't great, but it did change its tune within less than 48 hours, and has been pretty vocal and active in apologizing and fixing things since then.

It chaged its tune within less than 48 hours after getting caught and being publicly tarred and feathered in the media over it. But how long did this continue happening, unnoticed, before then?

No, that's really not a good metric. If someone has to be exposed as doing something nefarious before they apologize, it really doesn't matter how quickly they apologize after being exposed, since it's reasonable to assume, extrapolating from past behavior, that had they not been exposed, they would never have apologized.

Not everyone who thinks people ought to be free to live their own lives is your enemy, y'know?

On the contrary, anyone who believes himself free to live his own life without regard for those around him is, pretty much by definition, making himself the enemy of all those around him. I'm just one of the people who's studied the belief system enough to realize this.

The free market machinations between such entities as Netflix and Comcast are merely the market sorting itself out in times of great change, which is only natural.

Wrong. Free market principles only apply when conditions of freedom exist in the market. This is not the case in the ISP sector, which is dominated by anti-competitive monopolies and duopolies. At this point, free market economic principles break down and are replaced by monopoly economics, which are based on economic coercion, not freedom, and it absolutely is the government's job to limit such coercion.

This looks interesting, but the thing I'm a bit worried about is, if it's possible to create arbitrary DNA just by designing it on a computer, then it's possible to create biological DNA just by designing it on a computer. Does anyone really want to see the next generation of malware uploaded to the Web be viruses of the bio-warfare variety?

You can’t say you’re for competition but deny local elected officials the right to offer competitive choices.

Sure you can. All it takes is an injection of Libertarian Logic™.

You see, out in Ayn Rand Fantasyland, where carts are put before horses on a regular basis, if there's any way for something to be profitable, that's God-^H^H^H^H Invisible Hand-Given proof that it was meant to be that way and Heroic Entrepreneurs™ have the right to turn it into a profitable business venture, free from the encroachment of Evil Government™.

Competition is good, but only between Heroic Entrepreneurs™. When the Evil Government™ enters into competition with Heroic Entrepreneurs™, the Evil Government™ has an unfair advantage because they have a monopoly on the use of fo-- oh, wait, no, wrong Libertarian strawman argument. Umm... because they're not required to turn a profit to stay in business, and therefore they can undercut the Heroic Entrepreneurs™ and drive them out of business.

Pointing out to the wielder of such an argument that basic infrastructure is not supposed to be a profit center in and of itself, since it's supposed to be basic infrastructure that enables commerce to be built atop it for the benefit of all of civilization, is likely to make their head explode.

Parrots are good at mimicking sounds they hear, including the sound of people talking. I doubt most people would count that as "talking," though, which requires comprehension and the ability to carry on a conversation.

Yet when you actually bother to ask said entrepreneurs -- like this letter (pdf) from 100 companies including Yelp, Etsy, Kickstarter, Tumblr and GitHub -- they unequivocally make it clear Commissioner Pai doesn't speak for them:

"We are the “small, independent businesses and entrepreneurs” that Commissioner Pai referenced in his February 6, 2015 press release about the FCC’s impending net neutrality rulemaking

Which, exactly, of those major websites is a small, independent business again?

Having this happen once is just a bug. I could totally believe that. But as a developer, having it continually happen in production for an entire week without anyone noticing is much more than "just" a bug.

And the crazy thing is, we called it. Everything that's been done to abuse the DMCA, technically savvy users warned was going to happen back before the law was passed. Like Cassandra of old, the warnings were laughed off or handwaved away with "oh, that'll never happen..." and then it happened.

The DMCA should never have been passed, and now it needs to be repealed.

Not many months ago, everything we'd seen so far suggested Mr. Wheeler (no relation!) would work hand in hand with the telcos to give them what they want and would never even consider a Title II solution... but look where we are now.